Deborah Kalin's Blog, page 22

Tibet is…

Today I have a special present for you all: a guest post by the redoubtable Tessa!

Tessa is one of the authors featured in Baggage, which will be launched at Borders, South Wharf (20 Convention Center Place), Thursday 2 September 2010 1-3pm. Having read Tessa's contribution to the anthology (several times) I can promise it will be bursting at the seams with literary goodness and well worth your time.

Tessa offers the following introduction for the blog post:

After hearing about Deb's...

it's not unlike organising your own public flogging

In pondering the finer details of the Shadow Bound launch, there were some ideas that seemed OMG genius! on the face of it but which … didn't quite work out according to plan. In the interests of entertaining you, I thought I might share a couple of them with you.

One was that, in an attempt to decorate the room, I thought I might draw some golem characters. Good idea, no? Clay plays a pretty key role in Shadow Queen, after all, and there are even more golems in Shadow Bound, and I could draw ...

WorldCon Schedule including (oh yes) a certain book launch

So, AussieCon is fast approaching, so fast that this weekend saw the preliminary program issued. And, since it's not only in Australia but in my new hometown I, like others of far more important note, shall be there.

Not just wandering the corridors, wearing an expression somewhere between bewildered and panicked (depending upon how recently I've eaten and how confusing or maze-like the convention centre proves to be), but doing, you know, authorly things.

Saturday, 3:00pm (Room 203): Shadow...

introversion is not a disease

I'm an introvert.1

These days, thanks to tests like the Myers-Briggs, extroversion vs introversion is seen as a sliding scale rather than an either/or scenario. Which I mention only so you know that, in calling myself an introvert, I don't mean I'm a little bit I-wards of the centre, or leaning more I than E. I mean introverted in the classic sense. I mean I work and hang with introverts who look positively extroverted by comparison. On that sliding scale, I am the endpoint.

I am what Huck...

totally the big issues here, people

I have a love-hate relationship with chewing gum.

One of the guys at work always has these strange brands of gum, with highbrow flavours. He particularly favours minty orange, which I'll grant you is surprising at first, but delicious. And every now and then I steal some off him because, well, for example, lunch needs to be fought back against.

And every single time — every. single. time. — I arrive at the point where the delicious flavour has all but faded, and then past that point to where...

podcast

People, it's ALIVE.

It, in this case, being the podcast of my short story "The Wages of Salt".

I brushed at the crust. Dirty grains clung to the sweat of my palms. The shadow underneath, too clean-edged to be a phantasm, didn't...

details count

I snapped this at the top of Chuluut Canyon.

I'd expected to spend the walk peering after fossils and petroglyphs, which I'd heard could be seen in these parts. Instead I received a detailed lesson (complete with quiz) in distinguishing which animal had produced each of the various type of faeces we passed. (I was not, in point of fact, particularly good at this quiz.)

no one gets out alive

Chemically speaking, a catalyst is a substance that initiates or accelerates a reaction without itself being affected.

Which is correct, as far as it goes, but it's also a reductionist view.

The catalyst may appear unchanged from its initial state, but nevertheless it participates in the reaction. The reactants adhere to its surface, and squirm inside its pores. They shed an electron here, two there, dropping the detritus of their old form and using the catalyst to re-shape themselves into a...

call me back when the war is over

I am, right this very second, supposed to be writing.

Sir Tessa is sitting across from me1 and she's working industriously.

I am not.2

Instead I am trying out Sir Tessa's new portable ergonomic keyboard. I am not succeeding overly well at typing with this contraption, because the keys are in the wrong space! They're also labelled weirdly, but, being a touch-typist, that's not so disturbing on the whole.

Being a touch-typist is also part of the problem, however. It means my fingers know...